Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Take a Moment To Laugh About It

A few of my favorite DU threads on the shut-down follow. Even DUers are getting tired of the hysteria. Weren't we all supposed to be distributing the pension cyanide pills to escape the 212 degree atmospheric armageddon of climate collapse? It's so hard to get people to pay attention to your own private world ending these days! Genocide by another name.GOP Has Not Forgotten -----seniors, the poor, the disabled, the sick, the vulnerable, vets,
et al. They just want to eliminate them altogether because they are
useless eaters. They only want to fund people who deserve to live and
have a life.

2. Tell me about it. Where I live, the streets are strewn with the dead. nt

Then there is the whole line of argument about whether dissident legislators should be rounded up for sedition and sent to camps or just executed for treason in the normal manner. Mind you, this furor is raging on DEMOCRATIC Underground.

13. They are forcing government shut down. nt

18 USC § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy
US Code
Notes
Updates
Current through Pub. L. 113-36. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)
If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place
subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow,
put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States,
or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority
thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay to the execution of any
law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any
property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they
shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty
years, or both.

Democracy is fragile, isn't it? In 1397, at the time of the Revenge Parliament, Thomas Haxey incurred the wrath of Richard II for suggesting in a bill of complaints that His Majesty's household expenses should be curtailed, for which offense King Richard II had him tried and condemned to death for treason. Haxey survived his temerity; Richard II did not. Some brilliant ideas never die, it seems.

More than 600 years later, we are willing to sell our birthright for political pottage and, um, the executive is getting into a pissing match with Congress.

"Nigel Saul, who wrote the most recent academic biography on Richard II, concedes that...he showed clear signs of a narcissistic personality..."

Richard foreshadowed the Tudor police state:

"His kingship was thought to contain elements of the early modern absolute monarchy as exemplified by the Tudor dynasty."

On cronyism:

"Yet his actions were too extreme, and too abrupt. For one, the absence of war was meant to reduce the burden of taxation, and so help Richard's popularity with the Commons in parliament. However, this promise was never fulfilled, as the cost of the royal retinue, the opulence of court and Richard's lavish patronage of his favourites proved as expensive as war had been, without offering commensurate benefits."

And the final verdict:

"What he sought was, in contemporary terms, neither unjustified nor unattainable; it was the manner of his seeking that betrayed him."

I just love it when I don't have to write anything in order to write something.

Neil - my awe at the battle being conducted on DU against the advocacy of destroying the representational system of government started me thinking about what a long history the advocates of tyranny were ignoring, and as soon as my mind went that way - to the real beginnings of republicanism in the modern world - I realized how apposite Richard II's reign was.

There are also parallels to the reign of Edward II, whose unbounded favoritism eventually brought about his deposition.

It is almost uncomprehensible to me that there was so little understanding on DU of the evolution of the doctrine of legislative immunity and its necessity for any representative government.

In our modern era, the Barons of Solyndra and the Dukes of GE and GS, as well now as a plethoria of Earls of Cigna, Aetna and so forth have seized a good proportion of the Common's assets, and the Power of the Purse is once more sparked.

TJ - not just the stupid (although one poster responded to some of the worst postings with just about that), but the profoundly ahistorical context of the debate.

Perhaps this stuff is not taught any more in schools, what with everyone being dead and white and all that, but it is surpassingly strange to me that some can't perceive the functional problem.

If you read the threads, many are trying desperately to convey that forays into totalitarian government are unlikely to improve the situation, but the instinct for kings must be powerful indeed, because they don't seem to make much headway.

I refuse to ever click on a DU link, but I assume someone brought up the fact that representatives voting to spend more money than it takes in is a form of conspiracy to "take down" the government of the United States.

The attack on the House's power of the purse is the most important part of the crisis, in my opinion. The Senate has made a power grab for budgeting power in combination with the Executive, and it remains to be seen if the House can wrest it back. I find it disturbing that this issue has not been raised nationally--not even by the Republicans.

I'm not surprised by the state of mind on DU though, except for mild amazement that anyone is arguing in favor of constitutional democracy. The core principal of Progressivism is that there is a "right way to live" and the "right sort of people" have the ability and the obligation (not just the right) to force everyone to live that way.

I also have noticed that there is no discussion about the constitutional implications of the administration's contention.

But then, that's why there is no discussion of the constitutional question - the administration is on the other side. Also journalists are ill-educated and uninformed. This is a remarkable situation in a constitutional republic, and it bodes ill for the future.

However, there is one element of hope in the dogged attempt by a number of DU denizens to get their forum partners to think about the implications of their position.

Oh, there is no rational thought involved on that side. It's all about feelings. I had a Facebook buddy try and tell me that the Park Service had to shut things down, because if one of those old veterans had gotten hurt when they weren't there, they would sue. And she threw in something derogatory about the Tea Party at the end, just because. I laid into her and she may have unfriended me. It is willful blindness to what is going on. The link she was commenting on, was one I posted about the "gestapo" like behavior towards tourists in Yellowstone. Had another commenter get his panties in a bind because he said they really didn't herd them up and put them in gas chambers! I asked him where he was during the Bush administration, when Gestapo was tossed around on a regular basis. I doubt he was too concerned about how it was used then.

There are two things I worry about. One is a Kent State like incident, where the cops decided to shoot people (sort of like the way they shot that unarmed woman at the Capitol.) The other thing is the possibility of civil war. I can understand now how divisive a time that must have been.

Oh, and I guess the third thing I worry about is that Obama will refuse to give up power at the end of his term. I can see that one happening too.

If the Tea Party were able to get this out, I would be showing the situation in California and compare it to how it used to be. The school system is now on par with that of Mississippi. It has the most people on welfare in the country. And it is all because it is basically a one party state. That is a major danger. WA state is getting very close to going the same route.

You're right, that is a hopeful thing, to see Progressives pointing out the dangers of totalitarianism.

I'm concerned that there's great danger of a civil war, or something very much like one, in thirty years or so. The current debt-and-spending crisis will probably be papered over within a few years, but I doubt it will be fully resolved. There will still be a large population that perceives government as a necessary evil, and another large population that perceives government as its source of sustenance. If the great geographical Sorting continues, we could be looking at some real problems in a couple of generations.

If a significant percentage of Progressives argue against the police state tools required to keep the welfare state going, however, it's a whole different world.

Yes, I would call the crisis "papered over" if the welfare state takes a haircut, as opposed to 100% of the population accepting that there ain't no free lunch. I think this crisis will end with a compromise, and that the compromise won't last long.

I fully expect the government to become more corrupt regardless of political party, and I fully expect alternative economies to spring up and be attacked as "corrupt" by the same corrupt government employees.

OT with regard to DU Underground, but there's a GOOD article up at Ace O'Spades

http://minx.cc/?post=344066Obama's Empircal Rationalist Patriots Settle on New Talking Point: People Who Disagree With Our Profligate Spending are "Economic Traitors"

gist: when the Left's glorious promises come crashing down, THERE HAS TO BE A SCAPEGOAT; and that's the point when the government crackdown (on the Jews, on the breadmakers, on whoever is handy) begins, ushering in what historians later call "The Days of Terror".

The best part is the US has already done this twice, once with black people post-Civil War and most recently with "Illegal Immigrants". One scapegoat was created by the Democrats, and the other by Republicans. (And the denials of those truths has never ceased.)